Social Networking: A Freelancers Best Friend

With marketing being every freelancer’s second job, is social networking our best friend? Let’s take a look at how every freelancer should use social media to gain exposure.

Social media is easily the #1 way of gaining exposure, as well as keeping in touch and contacting other professionals in your field. For writers it can be a very lonely experience sitting in front of the computer all day. This is where social networking comes into play. There are millions of people on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to name a few, which means there are people out there that would be interested in what you have to say. We take for granted that we have people who actually care about what we have insights upon. This is the biggest gift any of us could have, because in the past no one had the ability to share a story, or opinion, and gain feedback by 1000’s of people like we can today.

Twitter

Easily one of the best websites for social networking, Twitter is one of the easiest ways to gain a large amount of followers in a short period of time. Most writers do not know how to use Twitter to gain clients, as well as a group of followers that actually care about what they have to say. Any writer should start by following some well known freelance writers. By doing so, the writer will have access to everyone that is following the person that they have chosen.  Step one would be to go into the followers of the well known writer and follow as many of them as you can. The people following the writer will most likely be interested in what you have to say since you all share a common interest.

Do not forget gaining exposure requires some work. Having a personal blog/website to add to your Twitter account will help immensely. This way every time that you make a post you can share it with all of your followers. Posting a great article can help gain exposure amongst your followers and the whole Twitter community, because some of your posts may be Retweeted or talked about amongst everyone. This is the best way to gain momentum in becoming a known writer amongst the freelancing community.

Facebook

Creating a Facebook Fan Page can be very beneficial to any business, whether it be for freelancing or a large corporation. Facebook has over 500 million users, which means there are millions of users that you are able to get in touch with. By making a fan page you will be marketing your freelance business as well as starting conversations. Always make sure to update your fan page at all times of the day, there is nothing more that people hate than an inactive fan page. Start conversations with your followers so that they are heard, because these are the most important people to you. Your followers on Facebook can be the difference between you landing a job, or being unemployed for quite some time.

Clients also love to have a place to check out your posts and see how you interact with your community. If you have a community that dislikes you then odds are that a potential client will not even think about hiring you. Measuring the amount of “Likes” that your page has is also a good way to see who was satisfied with your services. For example, when you have a client that loved your work you can simply ask them to like your fan page and leave a testimonial on it. This way whenever another client views the page they will see that you have done a good job and are worth the money.

I am thinking about going more in depth on this subject by giving step-by-step instructions on how to have social networking success. What do you guys think?